Fist and Faith wrote:I also saw it. Alas, I'm not remotely as enthusiastic as SPK. I won't say what I didn't like yet, since I don't want people to be thinking about that when watching. Another time.
Although I agree that Kong was sympathetic. As he ever is.
I'm afraid I'm not that enthusiastic about the film either. It's okay, but I wouldn't call it great. I have no idea what part Fist didn't like, though. Come on, man, spill it! Enquiring minds want to know!
Earlier I was comparing Jackson's King Kong to Cameron's Titanic in terms of the big gamble both productions represented for their respective filmmakers, both artistically and financially. Well, if I can keep this comparison going, it's clear to me that Titanic was the bigger risk for the reputation of its director. But whereas Titanic ultimately succeeded as big screen entertainment, I don't think King Kong does.
Say what you will about the ingratiating aspects of Cameron's opus, but I felt Titanic was masterfully crafted - all 3-plus hours of it. Cameron had a firm grasp on the flow of the story as he guided his movie inexorably towards its climax. But I didn't feel a firm sense of momentum in King Kong sweeping me along. Rather, it was stop-and-go. I did not feel fully involved with the story or characters. When we get to the Empire State Building, what should have been a moving and tragic denouement to the whole film seemed a bit too perfunctory to me. I could see that Jackson was striving to depict the immense sadness and regret between Kong and Ann Darrow -- and yes, some of that did shine through -- but the tragedy of their relationship did not hit me in the gut as it should have.
The big ape himself I have nothing but praise for: I guess it's a no-brainer to say that this is the best-realized Kong ever put on film. Bravo to Andy Serkis and all the CG artists! It's been a long time since I saw the 1976 version, so I don't recall how believable Kong was in that, but surely Serkis's Kong now rules as the definitive incarnation.
The
other relationship in the film, between Naomi Watts (Ann Darrow) and Adrien Brody (Jack Driscoll), works well enough. Their romance is certainly far less irritating than, say, the one between pin-ups Winslet and diCaprio in Titanic. But this got me thinking about the whole notion of love stories: just how
do you properly film an epic love story for the big screen without it turning into cinematic mush? I thought Jackson actually did a fairly decent job with Arwen and Aragorn in LOTR, though their romance was at a tangent to the plot. For a really moving love story writ large for the silver screen, I would vote David Lean's Dr. Zhivago. From beginning to end, it's one beautiful and classy movie. And I'm slipping off topic...
Maybe some of my disappointment with Jackson's Kong stems from his faithfulness to the original film and its time period, the 1930's. Nothing wrong with being faithful to the source, of course (and Jackson does revere the original, saying it was the movie that inspired him to be a filmmaker.) Yes, maybe 1930's America has the air of a more romantic era that befits the King Kong mythos, and I guess a period movie is just plain cool to many. But I would have preferred a modern twist on the tale. Look at how brilliantly Spielberg updated The War of the Worlds. In terms of dinosaur/monster movies, another Spielberg film is even more relevant to this discussion: Jurassic Park. In Jackson's depiction of a prehistoric world, KK has its moments. However, I think that in his striving for a hyper-gritty realism, Jackson misses the kind of true wonder and sense of awe that Spielberg achieved in Jurassic Park. Spielberg draws you into his world, while Jackson clubs you on your head before you can enjoy any beauty. I think Jackson was also guilty of bludgeoning the audience -- or
me, anyway -- to death in the LOTR films following The Fellowship: too much brutal, grimy "realism" with not enough wondrous magic to counterbalance it.
Also, in this post-Jurassic Park age where the audience -- i.e. a filmgoer like
me -- now expects
some degree of scientific inquiry to go along with the murder and the mayhem, Jackson's reversion to the simple "catch big ape and bring to big city" story just doesn't cut it for me anymore. Spielberg seriously spoiled me with Jurassic Park and all the modern DNA science (I concede it's more "sci-fi" than real science). So from my perspective, Jackson's Kong is, unfortunately, a static work frozen in an anachronistic setting. I would like to have learned about Kong's origins or at least have
some sense of his background, for example. As it is, I came out of Jackson's King Kong with no revelations about either the beast or the beauty.
* 
But I was too disappointed with the overwhelming silliness of it to even notice those aspects. Yeah, I love Star Wars and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and they certainly break with reality. But they're about fantasy (maybe? heh) aspects of reality that we aren't aware of. Kong, otoh, is simply supposed to be a huge gorilla in the reality that we know, and I prefer the rules of this reality be followed to a much greater degree than they did in Kong.